BuildingMyBento, please PM me if you want and I can give you a contact in Abu Dhabi who might be able to help you navigate the requirements (for a fee, unfortunately (not to me, to him )).

I agree with you about the benefit of local contacts and tea etc., for sure, but if you are not plugged into the local scene, then it's not so easy just to make the right contacts. The front-line guy at any consulate is likely to be a low-level bureaucrat, possibly not even a national of the country whose consulate you are visiting, so likely won't have much pull. Asking him out for tea through the bullet-proof glass window when you walk in off of the street will likely be difficult.

But you are on to something. There are few actual rules here, so being polite but assertive, as an American, can work. This worked for me at the Russian consulate in Abu Dhabi -- they said I had to be a resident, but when I insisted, they proved helpful and eventually granted it to me.